I'm John Batsch with Johnson Schanser of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

where he's Senior Vice President for Research, he's the author of Gaza Conflict 2021 which Jonathan

remarks may have been a practice run for what we're witnessing now suggesting that

there's a larger battle plan.

Jonathan, you mentioned the US forces

in the Eastern Mediterranean in passing

to the Suez Canal, the Eisenhower,

and that Ohio-class missile boat somewhere in the Indian Ocean of the Persian

Gulf.

So we have the U.S. forces, mighty U.S. forces.

What is Tehran see? Presuming Tehran is looking at the big battlefield map.

They have the Huthies, they have a Palestinian Islamic jihad, and Hamas reported in Hezbollah territory with rockets. We have Hezbollah

and we have the attacks by Iraqi-based or Syrian-based militias loyal to Tehran in Syria and in Iraq.

That's the battlefield I see right now. We had that odd report out of Brazil of an arrest of a terror cell thanks to the Masad giving

information to the Brazilian authorities. We also had an assassination attempt

to the vice president of the European Parliament in Madrid who is recovering

and he believes Iran was behind the attempt to they shot him in the face and he

didn't die those are everything I know Jonathan. Does that describe a

wider war? Are they testing limits? What are they what do you see in that vast

landscape I just pointed to? I can't connect the dots Jonathan.

Well I think you've done a good job of laying out the players.

I look I would describe it this way that the Iranians right now probably had a wider plan to engage in a full-scale

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